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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24656296">follow your fire</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/oretsev/pseuds/oretsev'>oretsev</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood &amp; Manga</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/M, Gen, Ishbal | Ishval, Ishval Civil War, Nightmares, Roy-centric, Royai Day 2020, Royai Week 2020, mentions of blood/gore</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:56:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,192</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24656296</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/oretsev/pseuds/oretsev</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>During the war, Roy Mustang’s days are filled with smoke and sand. But in sleep, he sees Riza Hawkeye.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>follow your fire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His days are filled with smoke and sand, the heat nearly molten in his dark hair. It’s a marvel, he thinks - his thoughts echo from somewhere deep inside himself, a different origin than the self that watches buildings crumble and families scatter - that there can yet be monotony in such a flood of sensation.</p><p>He logs his first confirmed kill. But after that first day, he could no sooner report how many Ishvalans he’d killed than he could say how many dreams he’d dreamt - the memories of both drip honey-thick from his mind, leaving behind the certainty of regular occurrence, but few to be counted. Some such memories he could recall on command, others prickled only when brushed by a stray thought, yet others he knew where to find if only he could bring himself to wade into the darkness to retrieve them. </p><p>His nights in Ishval are neither fully respite nor fully anguish, but some exquisite confusion of the two. In his standard-issue tent, there is relief in shedding his ignition cloth gloves, sticky with sweat that may as well be blood - he wishes, some nights, it were blood, as if seeing the gore on his hands might stir in him something other than the sun-bleached emptiness that seemed to cling behind his eyes and inside his ribs. But in these small moments, at least he was not looking death in the eye, inviting it into a home that wasn’t his. Instead, it looked askance at him and he pretended not to notice.</p><p>In the nights he felt he could not claw his way back from the freefall in his mind to a darkness that at least afforded stability beneath his feet, he thought of her. He wished wishes he hadn’t earned, pled with every frayed fiber of his being. If he could have laughed, he would have, to think that his past self could have prayed for her hand in his, an apartment in the city with not one but two coats hung by the door. His most fervent prayer, a desperate bid for calm in this storm: that she was out there, somewhere, without a single thought of this hell.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He would not remember in the morning, but he dreamt of her.</p><p>
  <em> He dreamt he followed her through a marketplace; she was older than he remembered her, but there was no doubt it was her. He watched as she inspected produce, and finding it to her liking, exchanged coins with the grocer. A wedding band glinted on her finger as she packed her purchases away. Her life continued on while he lived the same bloodsoaked day again and again in the desert. A rising panic hammered at his chest. He wanted to call out to her as she made her way back to an apartment building nearby, but dread stuck in his throat. She opened the front door and he quickly realized, in the way that one realizes in dreams, that they had not stepped into an apartment building, but rather her father’s house. The house had been in disrepair when he’d returned for the last time, but now it was pristine, empty. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> She turned to him, her hands empty too, noticing him for the first time - she was younger now, the girl he pictured from his youth. “Roy?” She breathed his name, a question on her tongue, her eyebrows drawn together as she searched his face for answers. But her expression quickly turned to fear, and she clawed at the collar of her blouse. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. For a desperate moment she strained to speak, to scream, only to find silence. He stood, unable to bring himself to go to her. He knew he should, hatred bubbled up within himself, at himself, for watching her struggle in front of him. And yet he did nothing. She retched, and sand poured from her mouth. It pooled around her shoes, far too much sand to have come from just her mouth, he thought. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> His name, he realized. She was calling his name. There was no sound but the hiss of sand spreading across the floor, and he finally tore his eyes from her to see that it was flowing from the doors and windows, from the staircase, from every crack and crevice in the house. They were waist deep in it, and now he raised a hand, brushing her shoulder in a gesture that felt less like comfort and more like grief. She smoldered where he touched her, and her arm began to turn to ash, fluttering away to mix with the sand around them. Now she screamed, a sound that ripped at something inside of him, scraping his mind raw. He clutched her closer but everywhere he touched she turned to ash, dissolving beneath his fingertips. He saw what he was doing to her and he couldn’t keep from tightening his arms around her.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> In seconds, she was gone. He knew she was gone. And yet he frantically sifted through the sand around him. He didn’t know what he was hoping for, but this couldn’t be the end. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Now he was the one that was screaming. </em>
</p><p>When he awoke in the morning, he blinked the grit from his eyes. Though it was the least of his problems, his irritation flared at the sand that seemed to get everywhere. The last wisps of a dream were rapidly receding from his consciousness.</p><p>He wondered if Riza Hawkeye ever managed to get out of her father’s house.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>There is a razor sharp shard of time between the moment the young woman removes her hood and the moment she addresses him, but it’s ample time for his mind to flicker through the nightmares he thought he’d forgotten. Faster than he could have even brought her name to his lips, images flash before him, divorced from their context if not from the accompanying panic and dread. <em> His hand brushing her cheek, leaving a trail of charred skin in the wake of his touch. Flames smoldering beneath inked skin. The floorboards of his master’s house crumbling away beneath his feet. </em></p><p>The only conscious thought he can form is this: she has the eyes of a killer. Grief nestles into his chest for the girl he knew, now warped by the crackle of gunfire. She asked if he still remembered her. Of course he remembers. He remembers who she was, and with horror, he remembers who she should be. She should have left her father’s house, found a job or gone on to school. She should not be here, not with the bridge of her nose sun-scorched and peeling, not with the mud of dust and sweat on her brow. Not with blood on her hands and gore in her dreams.</p><p>That night, in the scant moment between wakefulness and sleep, he understands. His grief is not wholly unselfish; he mourns for his most shameful escapist imaginings of returning to a normal life, returning to her. Even standing in the ruins of his sins, he could remember who Riza Hawkeye should be, but he cannot say the same of himself.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title taken from Kodaline's "Follow Your Fire" which sparked the first inklings of a concept for this piece, probably over two years ago now at this point. Fun fact: I originally kicked around the idea of making this a companion piece to Reality Had No Gears, but decided the angst potential was way higher if I kept it canon.</p><p>Happy Royai Day everyone!<br/>(Feels weird to be cheerful after that one.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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